Accruing holiday as a teacher on maternity leave?

[Cherryysu]

Hi, I am a primary school teacher and started maternity leave in sept. I ideally want to be off with my little one until July and return before summer.
I am wondering about accruing holiday during maternity leave and wondered if anyone knows how it works as I was talking to a friend who is a lecturer and she accrues holiday from the university so wondered if it was the same or similar for us primary school teachers. I have contacted HR but they are taking a long time getting back to me!
thank you, C

You don’t accrue holiday as a teacher

I accrue leave working for local government

Your lecturer friend will be employed under different terms and conditions based on separate national agreements - you’re comparing apples and oranges.

If you aren’t getting anywhere with HR/ management you could speak to your union who can give you a steer on what you are/aren't entitled to.

No, you don’t accrue holidays as a teacher, your friend is employed on a different contract, probably with a set number of hols

You don’t accrue holiday as a teacher but you can do shared parental leave so you can ‘work’ over the holiday.

As a serving teacher myself, I'm wondering how that could possibly happen?

It doesn’t happen as a teacher. What you’ll need to do to get the best out of your pay is to start back at work on the last day of term and then you’ll get full pay over summer holidays

Contrary to popular belief, lecturers are not off when the students are not at university. They need to take annual leave if they want a day off work.

No you can’t gain holiday time. Most people return to work on the last day of term to get paid over the holidays.

Have a chat with your union to get up to speed with how teacher contracts work.

Teacher contracts are different. It used to be the burgundy book, then became known as the helicopter book, not sure what the latest iteration looks like. Try teacher union website.

I didn’t think teachers got annual leave, I thought they were just ‘on leave’ and this was pre allocated in line with the school diary/calendar.

I did not think there was any other days annual leave available to teachers.

https://maternityaction.org.uk/advice/discrimination-during-maternity-leave-and-on-return-to-work/

Teachers are legally entitled to paid annual leave. However, the number of ‘days off’ exceed that so they are not all paid. Teachers can also only take their leave during the set times of school breaks so those annual leave days blur into the non-paid days.

In Scotland you accrue holidays as a teacher so not sure if earlier replies relate to England only? I accrued 36 days when I took a year off for maternity leave. Had to take 19 and got a lump sum of pay for the rest.

Just to clarify, I took the 19 as extra days on the end of my maternity leave so I had almost another month off. I went on maternity leave in August and started back the following September (one year maternity and then 19 days holiday).

I'm a teacher on maternity leave. I'm going to do the shared parental leave thing. I'll be back at work for the Easter holidays and for may half term, and properly start back on the last day of the summer term. My dh isn't taking any time off when I'm using the shared parental leave: spoke to HR about it and they were fine with it. There's a really great website that's just about shared parental leave for teachers. Can't remember what it's called though!

Here it is

www.teachersspl.co.uk/how-it-works

"Teachers are legally entitled to paid annual leave. However, the number of ‘days off’ exceed that so they are not all paid. Teachers can also only take their leave during the set times of school breaks so those annual leave days blur into the non-paid days."

Yes this is correct. I asked when I was on Mat leave and it was explained like this too. It's something like 28 days you're entitled to but regardless of when you take your Mat leave you will get well over that entitlement annually so it doesn't accrue in the same was as other jobs.

Just be aware with the shared parental leave thing it can be good, however you are paid at the lower rate when you return from the SSP part so make sure it will overall be financially beneficial to you when you take it.

This.

Teaching staff have an entitlement to statutory annual leave of 28 days per academic year, which must be taken during school closure periods. Schools are closed for 170 days per year. That means that if you have no opportunity to 'take leave' during leave year 1 (maternity year) you will 'take your leave' from school year 1 and 2 (56 days) from the 170 days of leave in year 2. In reality, your holiday pay is rolled up into your salary and paid evenly across the year, so you will already have been paid the 28 days leave for year 1 during your maternity leave.

so you will already have been paid the 28 days leave for year 1 during your maternity leave.

But maternity leave for a teacher is not a year on full pay. Mine was something awful like 4 weeks full pay, 2 weeks 90%, 13 weeks 50% and then the rest statutory. If you got a full year pay, you could argue teachers get their holiday pay during their mat year.

The 50% is 50% plus statutory so it's really not awful compared to what a lot of people
get.

I now work for the civil service and will be getting 6 months full pay and then 3 months statutory. Plus I can extend it with accrued annual leave. Everyone I know has had similar so teaching maternity pay really isn’t good.

"I now work for the civil service and will be getting 6 months full pay and then 3 months statutory. Plus I can extend it with accrued annual leave. Everyone I know has had similar so teaching maternity pay really isn’t good."

That's unusual though, most people only get statutory. I'm not saying it shouldn't be better, it should, for everyone, but I was a lot better off than a lot of my friends who were on statutory.